• The Wishing Tree bears fruit. The School Committee gratefully accepted a gift of $18,000 from the Carlisle Education Foundation and the Carlisle School Association to cover all of the items that were on the Wishing Tree at the annual auction in March. Teachers asked for items needed in their classrooms that were not funded by the school budget. The "tree" held ornaments describing these needs at the auction, where attendees could pull off an ornament and fund the request.

School Committee Chair Nicole Burkel thanked the CEF, the CSA and the community for their generous contributions. "It makes a big difference in the classrooms. It's one of the things that makes this a special place to work."

• Buckets to catch the rain. Superintendent of Building and Grounds David Flannery reported on the effects of recent heavy rains, "We did well. There was no property loss. There were the usual roof leaks, but no surprises. The worst leaks were in the ensemble [music] room in the Corey Building." He said the leaks will be repaired this summer.

• Eighth-grade essay winner. Alexandra Knobel received a silver award for excellence for her personal essay memoir, "Nudgemama's Memory" from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards of 2006. This organization has been documenting outstanding achievement of young writers and artists for 80 years. Each year, 250,000 students from grades seven through 12 participate. Eighth-grade language arts teacher Marcella Pixley helped students submit their work to this national contest.• Gold Star Award. The Massachusetts Culture Council has selected the Carlisle Chinese New Year Celebration as a Gold Star Project. This event was orchestrated by one of Carlisle's Chinese language teachers, Chiao Bin Huang. The celebration included Carlisle students doing Chinese dances. The event had strong community participation by both old and young. This is the first time this honor has come to Carlisle.

• New defibrillator at school. Matthew Koski, now a freshman at CCHS, had learned about defibrillators in seventh grade when he was working on a Boy Scout badge with a requirement to get something changed in his community. He suggested then that there should be a defibrillator at the school, and now there is one. School nurses Kathy Horan and Lori Desjardin are now CPR and AED certified. They will give a course to 35 school staff members to get them certified in how to use the device . Flannery, who is also Chief of the Fire Department, said the town obtained its first defibrillator about ten years ago. In that time, it has saved five lives.